Kazakhstan to ban anti-Shia Salafi Sect

Kazakhstan’s newly created Ministry of Religious Issues and Civil Society says it is taking steps to ban the Salafi sector (Wahhabis). 

Kazakhstan’s newly created Ministry of Religious Issues and Civil Society says it is taking steps to ban the Salafi sector (Wahhabis). 

Minister Nurlan Ermekbaev said on October 14 in Astana that Salafism “poses a destructive threat to Kazakhstan” and his ministry was working on steps to legally ban it.

Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbaev has said that a series of deadly attacks in June in the northwestern city of Aqtobe were carried out by Salafists.

The Salafi or Wahhabism has been branded as extremist and banned in some former Soviet republics.